diogenesian discourse

The keyboard is mightier than the machine gun... The political, philosophical and general outpourings of a troubled soul living in Australia and blogging his Vietnam veteran's head off.

Nothing in this blog can be believed. If you think that
anything in this blog is true or factual, you'll need to verify
it from another source. Do you understand? No? Then read it again,
and repeat this process, until you understand that you cannot sue
me for anything you read here. Also, having been sucked into taking
part in the mass-murder of more than 3 million Vietnamese people
on behalf of U.S. Big Business "interests", I'm as mad as a cut snake (and broke) so it might be a bit silly to try to sue me anyway...

Thursday, February 01, 2007

eat money, John...

Australia's major coal loading port, Newcastle, has a bit of a problem. They can't load coal (for export) fast enough. There are currently fifty coal freighters waiting in the roads off Newcastle.

This got me thinking...

Coal is one of the major greenhouse pollutants, right?

We can't sell enough of the stuff, right?

John HoWARd's justification for selling as much coal as possible to anyone who's willing to buy it, is that if we didn't sell it, they'd buy it elsewhere. I've heard that exact same rationale used by drug dealers to justify why selling drugs is OK.

Oh, and did you know that after ten years of John HoWARd's rule, Australia is the biggest greenhouse polluter (per capita) on the planet?

Anything for a buck, eh?

I'd like to remind John HoWARd of a 19th century Cree Indian saying: "Only when the last tree has died and the last river poisoned and the last fish been caught will you discover that you cannot eat money."

The coal mines are owned by the same cartels who own the uranium mines. Why do you think we're not going to employ serious solar solutions just yet? We have to wait till that mob buy into solar in a big way and THEN we'll give THEM the contracts... Are we catching on yet, boys and girls?

Coal is not just a nastily efficient source of excess carbon dioxide in the sky, it is the primary source of mercury and other metals that are being deposited in far away and seemingly untouched places like our Florida everglades. Wind takes the uncleaned smoke around the planet, rain deposits it. Even our own government admits it http://sofia.usgs.gov/projects/evergl_merc/Other reports address the source more clearly, but don't let anyone tell you there is no problem. [If bush could read, he'd would probably have that report suppressed] Just think: If by some change of fortunes, Oz were to start receiving more rain, you'd start getting more lead and mercury in your wells!

And we kill a dozen miners or more a year bringing the stuff nature wanted buried back to the surface.

We'd all be better off to leave it in the ground.

Oh, lets don't forget that old nightmare, Acid Rain...also from coal: The die-off of forests on the ridges of the appalachian mountains began decades ago...when global warming was barely detectable but concentrations of sulfate and nitrate compounds just down wind of the Ohio valley's mass of coal burning power plants fertilized the diseases and acidified the soil.

I agree 100%, GS. But still we need to factor-in the population explosion. The graph for that is identical in shape to the global warming graph.

I'll make the point that an exploding population, had the internal combustion engine not been invented, would have sought to meet its energy meeds via coal and wood, resulting in an explosion in the consumption of these two commodities. Outcome? No forests and coal smoke polluted atmosphere.

Imagine every household using wood or coal to heat their homes? Imagine a billion coal-burning steam engines.

I suspect the global warming graph would have been strikingly similar.

Which brings me to my main point: The REAL problem is how to decimate the global population in double-quick time. And then you would have the economic effect of a 90% market shrinkage - the mother of all depressions. So, from an economics point of view ,and economics is the dominant religion on the planet at this time, it's "not in our interests" to decimate the population, in fact the economy depends on an ever increasing population. Fur phuque's sake, guys, JOIN THE DOTS!!!

Good luck, guys... I fear we'll all still be debating madly whilst the planet goes to a hell of our own making whilst we each point the finger at the other guy.

Nothing less than a global dictator can solve this problem in the short time needed to accomplish the mission. I respectfully put my name forward for that position... Vote [1] Gerry in The Election To End Democracy... ;-)

The counter shown below displays the number of Israeli military personnel refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories. I applaud their integrity and their strength of character. To me they are heroes of peace and humanity.